THE SOLUTION OF THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM

By BOOKER TAliaferro WashINGTON, Orator, Educator; Principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Born a slave near Hale's Ford, Va., in 1857 or 1858.

From an address delivered at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition, at Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 18, 1895.

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A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: Water, water; we die of thirst! The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back : Cast down your bucket where you are. A second time the signal, Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered: Cast down your bucket where you are. The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: 'Cast down your bucket where you are "'-cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, in mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.

Our greatest danger is, that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem, It is

at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

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To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, Cast down your bucket where you are. Cast it down among the eight million negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests

And here, bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate

problem which God has laid at the doors of the South you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind: that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, of letters and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good which, let us pray God, will come in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SPANISH WAR

By JOHN DAVIS LONG, Lawyer, Author; Governor of Massachusetts, 1880-82; Member of Congress from Massachusetts, 1882-88; Secretary of the Navy, 1897-. Born in Buckfield, Maine.

From a speech made at a dinner of the Republican Club of Massachusetts, October 26, 1898. See Boston Herald and Journal, Oct. 27, 1848.

I cannot stand in this generous presence and not be keenly alive to the fact that it emphasizes, not the kindness of personal friendship, not even the spirit of partisan zeal, but the warm, enthusiastic pride of the American citizen in the administration of the American government; pride in his country, and pride especially, I am sure, from your welcome to-night to me, in the glory of the American navy. Were there ever such pages as that navy has written, not in water, but in letters of light on the firmament of history? Why should I speak for it, when the navy speaks for itself?

Is it not enough to say that it has maintained the glorious standard to which it rose in the War of the American Revolution, and in the War of 1812, and in the War for the Union? Its achievements during the last six months have been one blaze of unprecedented triumph. Not only the triumph of battle, but the finer triumph of the highest professional skill, of scientific achievement, and of that preparation and fore

sight which makes the public service efficient, accurate, and successful. It has added new names to the already glittering constellation of heroic stars.

The marvelous victories at Manila and Santiago, where Dewey and Sampson only led a list which runs without a break in its merit from the admiral to the humblest sailor and marine, have made the naval power of the United States master of the sea.

Of its professional spirit I cannot speak too highly. That spirit animated the officer on the deck, the commandant at the yard, the chief in the bureau, and no less the grades, every one of them, below these. Line and staff, superior and subordinate, have all worked with matchless fidelity and ability, and in harmonious co-operation, and deserve equal honor.

When Hobson tendered his life on the forlorn hope of the Merrimac, the decks of the ships at Santiago were crowded with heroes, whose names are written in water, but who were eager to give their own lives to win the same high meed of praise and to do the same noble service for their country.

The glory of the navy, and the glory of the war which it shares with the army, is not, however, in battle alone; or, rather, it is not in the brutal elements of battle. It is rather in the fine instinct, the heroic courage, the splendid devotion, the intense patriotism which nerve men to endure what otherwise were the unpardonable horrors of armed conflict, for the sake of the great ends and causes for which battles are fought. The war through which we have just passed was not waged for the exultation of victory. It was for the unloosing of the yoke of bondage, the elevation of an oppressed people, the diviner civilization of the coming century. Its finer touches were more in the generous humanity it aroused than in the splendid courage it evoked.

Not a trace of personal animosity toward the foe was visible from beginning to end. Few words will last longer than those which Captain Evans uttered when he said of his

men during the battle of Santiago that So long as the enemy flew its flag they fought like American seamen, but when the flag was hauled down they were as gentle and tender as American women.' It was a revelation to the Spanish prisoners when they found themselves received with Christian kindness in an encampment rather than a prison at Portsmouth; their wounds bound up and every want provided for.

The lesson has not been lost on the civilization of the time when Cervera, returning to his seat in the Spanish Senate, proclaims the humanity of America, and suggests to Spain that she benefit by our example, waken from her bondage to old limitations, and follow the lead of American enterprise and American institutions. . .

I stood a few days ago on the portico of the executive mansion. I recalled that in my youth I there met President Lincoln as he came out of the White House door. We were alone. Had I then lost, as I have since lost, the awe which a young man feels on meeting a great one, I should have presumed to speak to him; and, perhaps, one of the saddest faces on which I ever looked might have been touched, in the passing greeting, with that kindly smile and lighting of the eyes which sometimes transformed it into beauty.

The burden of the great war was then upon his gaunt frame. He had emancipated the slave, but the war was not over. The freedom of a race, the issue of equal rights for all men, high or low, black or white, was still trembling in the balance.

A few days ago I stood with President McKinley on the same portico. We were not alone. Every foot of space, the railings, the grounds, were filled with a crowd of eager, interested people, men and women and children, waiting the march of the 10th regular cavalry, colored troops, who soon came passing in review. They were dismounted and marching in column. They were the heroes of the recent war. They had saved the brave Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.